So much for that "limited edition"!

https://www.thomannmusic.com/behringer_2600.htm

Korg? Who's that? Ohhhhh, yeah...right...the guys who made the ARP 2600 "reissue" for SPECIAL people.

So for the rest of us, here's this. Cheaper, AVAILABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!, and in preorders now, apparently. Oh, and none of that "limited" bullcrap having to do with a "road" "case" that seemed to be made of black saran wrap and posterboard.

Normally, I'm not really down with Uli and how he runs his business. But this WAS partly designed by the AM Synths people with the specific intention of replicating the ARP 2600 in a more modern manner. And if you buy one, you can help starve a Korg marketing exec, hopefully the one that yanked us all around back at Winter NAMM. This one time, they deserve whatever Uli can pull off here after the s**tshow Korg put us through with the biggest bait-n-switch since the Micor Coupland!

EDIT: almost forgot the cherry on this cake: $600-ish. NOT nearly $4k.

EDITED Oct 24th 2020, 01:36

I didn't realize the AJH folks were involved with this. I love everything about those guys.
I'm also coming around to Uli's willingness to put these slightly modernized clones out in the world. People have been clamoring for them for years, and my RD8 is incredibly fun. They sound great too.
Korg could have nailed it, but really blew it. No sympathy here.

I didn't realize the AJH folks were involved with this.
-- farkas

Probably because I really meant to say AM Synths. Got all those alphabet-soup makers names mixed up...easy enough to do!

Hi Lugia,

Thanks for pointing out on this one. It looks great and sounds good! We only have to wait till end of March next year... Long wait but it looks like it's worth it :-)

Oh yes... and it has lots of patch points, so that's fantastic, do you know if they are Eurorack compatible?

Thank you and kind regards, Garfield.

Edit: Forgot about the patch points.

EDITED Oct 25th 2020, 00:30

Thanks for pointing out on this one. It looks great and sounds good! We only have to wait till end of March next year... Long wait but it looks like it's worth it :-)

Oh yes... and it has lots of patch points, so that's fantastic, do you know if they are Eurorack compatible?
-- GarfieldModular

Yeah...I'd definitely say that waiting a few months until DEFINITE availability beats the living crap out of waiting until hell freezes over for something that's one step removed from vaporware. Price considerations aside, this might be one of the few times that Uli's actually done the RIGHT thing.

As for the patchpoints, you betcha! I've crosspatched my 2600 to my Digisound 80 more times than I can count. It was the ARP 2600 that gave us the initial standardizations for analog synth interconnection, in fact...we still use their 1V/8va scaling and positive-going gate/triggers to this day. More than likely, when (and NOT "if") I get one (or two?) of these in hand, it'll wind up right back in the same position my old Rev.2 found itself in lots of the time.

Hi Lugia,

That's fantastic news that it's compatible with our Eurorack stuff. Can't wait till next year when it becomes available, love to test it and somehow I have the feeling that I might straight away buy it, let's see! :-)

Kind regards, Garfield.

I've always thought that every home should have an ARP 2600, frankly...standard gear, like a fridge, stove, toilet, etc. Thankfully, SOMEONE agreed with that who doesn't work for Korg! But yeah, 2600s make for magnificent "system cores", aside of the fact that they may well be the best thought-out teaching synth in history, PERIOD.

Yup the Arp 2600 and Korg MS20 are staples in synth history.

Yup the Arp 2600 and Korg MS20 are staples in synth history.
-- sacguy71

Which is one reason why I really went off the hinge when the truth about the KARP 2600's not-really-availability emerged. It, the MS-20, the Minimoog...ALL of these have what you'd call "performance practices" at this point, playing techniques specific to those individual synths, which means you'd be inclined to treat them as specific instruments and not merely "a synthesizer". I thought it was one of the most short-sighted decisions, and I still think how that was handled was a total botch-job. That's why, at this point in time, I'm NOT buying anything else by Korg. They're behaving weirdly...going from the zenith of the Odyssey, the MS-20 Mini, and the Volcas to this fiasco, the chronic issues that the Prologue had, reissuing the MS-20 in several Uli-esque colors for over twice the price of the still-available (and basically identical) Mini, and the retconned "improved" Minilogue XD, etc. That's not a good developmental arc.

I agree with you @Lugia, Korg has really dropped the ball as of lately. Don't get me wrong, I still like my SQ-1 sequencer as it is a cheap and quick modular portable sequencer but a lot of their moves lately have been in the wrong direction. Same with Elektron and Moog. One more reason why I made the move to modular as there are way more choices and the smaller modular companies are more responsive to feedback and customer support.

Right...take the release of the Wavestate. OK, it's cool and all...but at the same Winter NAMM they were touting that, they ALSO had an algorithmic FM polysynth that, from what I saw, fixed the obtuse user interface issues that have long plagued FM synths. Did they put that out? No...they put out the Wavestate, which is a retread of their older Wavestations, of which there's buttloads on the used (and NOS new) market.

So instead of doing something that would be welcome, and also something that synthesists would fall all over themselves to get, they opted for rehashing old turf. That's not just annoying, it's also fiscally irresponsible. But it's just another bag of trash on what seems like it might be a bit of a dumpster fire over in Hamamatsu as far as Korg's concerned, I suppose.

What do you make of this quote from Tatsuya Takahashi of Korg in Attack Magazine?

Attack Magazine: Would you like to do more Eurorack projects?

TT: If I can contribute to the community, yes. I love the Eurorack ecosystem.
Korg is bigger than any of the major players in the Eurorack community, so we have to be careful about entering it. Not because we are nice. It just doesn’t make any business sense to enter a market only to destroy it, unless you are very short-sighted.
As Jacques Attali puts it, “Altruism is the most rational selfish behaviour”.

Full interview can be found here:
https://www.attackmagazine.com/features/interview/tatsuya-takahashi-i-just-tried-to-design-products-to-be-the-best-i-can-imagine-them/

Wow!

I am not usually up for these Behringer clones, but this looks incredible! Thanks for the heads up!

I haven't bought anything Korg for a long time, I think maybe it was Gadget on iOS, maybe one of the other software versions. They are pretty good to be fair. I have no interest in hardware from them though.

farkas: Read that...quite interesting. Takahashi-san almost seems to be of a split mindset about the general direction of electronic instruments. On one hand, he's worked with Polyend to develop amazing new things there. But on the other, he also seems to understand the gravity of keeping older synths, and reissues of them, out of reach of the general public, and how this can be a problem.

His statements about Korg itself, though...also a bit telling. He mentions how Korg is able to take risks...and also, how Korg is a family-run firm that keeps a foot in tradition. That's a bit of a dichotomy, and it makes me wonder what he'd say OFF the record about Korg. This pretty much confirms my suspicions about Korg, actually...it's felt like there's been quite a bit of infighting there in recent years over the company's direction, with very forward-thinking ideas (the Volcas, for example) sitting side-by-side with some pretty egregious f**kups (the KR55 reissue comes to mind...an excellent redux with one GLARING flaw that's doomed it: no sync I/O, and this from a firm that WAS fastidious about having clock sync on most anything).

I don't think we're going to see the end of this mess anytime soon. And the fact remains that Korg angered the HELL out of many people with the KARP 2600 FS stunt; my sales guy at Sweetwater, for example, said that there's been a firestorm of interest in B.'s 2600, and many have mentioned that they'd felt screwed-over by Korg's "Ain't it neat? But you can't have one!" crap. Korg may have actually lit a fuse on the powderkeg they're sitting on with how that was handled, and Uli has (I can't believe I'm actually SAYING this) EVERY RIGHT to burn Korg to the ground with their version, IMHO. If a company makes such a massive miscalculation as Korg did with the not-really-a-reissue, they deserve whatever happens to them next!

Hi Lugia,

You mentioned: Uli has (I can't believe I'm actually SAYING this) EVERY RIGHT

Ha, ha

I also can't believe you are saying that, knowing you are usually quite critical about Uli's stuff ;-) But fair enough, if indeed Behringer's 2600 is in real as good as it looks (from video's etcetera) then I look forward to buying and using one! :-D

Kind regards, Garfield.

Edit: Updated typos.

EDITED Oct 29th 2020, 22:40

You mentioned: "Uli has (I can't believe I'm actually SAYING this) EVERY RIGHT..."

Ha, ha

I also can't believe you are saying that, knowing you are usually quite critical about Uli's stuff ;-) But fair enough, if indeed Behringer's 2600 is in real as good as it looks (from video's etcetera) then I look forward to buying and using one!
-- GarfieldModular

Actually, I'm hard on most anything that crosses my path. I don't have the time or money to screw around with screwy companies. This is also why you don't see a Hydrasynth in my studio, but you DO find a Modal Argon8 instead. Act like a lunatic in response to a perfectly legit question about upcoming supply, and you're gonna lose me...and ASM's rep did just that. Very crazy, very dumb.

The thing that started changing my opinion about B's stuff was probably the Pro-1. Before I opted to get one, I'd heard from a colleague that Dan Bell (the legendary Detroit techno producer, and a Pro-One fanatic from way back) had A-Bed one against the real thing...and found NO difference in sound quality and performance. Now, yes, it uses the reissued Curtis chips, which would make it really difficult to screw that design up...but even I was rather impressed with the Pro-1 when it arrived. Build was good (NOT something I would've expected from B. given some of their past junk), and the sound was immediately recognizable when I dialed in some fave settings.

When the B.2600 arrives, I won't buy mine right off, even though I'm in line for a unit from the first batch at Sweetwater. Instead, I'll actually take a day and GO TO Sweetwater and sit down with it and then give it a real thrashing! If it performs like the synth that I learned modular synthesis on at the very beginning, then it'll be going home with me. Otherwise not.

Oh, and this doesn't let Uli off on his shitty behavior (don't think I've forgotten the Trump-grade slurry BS of the "KIRN" synth...how's that brown shirt collection goin', Mr. Ear?) and his long past of thumbing his nose at intellectual property laws and rights. Those are definite MINUSES in my book. But as long as Uli fucks off somewhere else in his giant Shenzhen factory and lets more sensible heads run the show, hopefully we'll see more "on-track" behavior and less of...well, what made Behringer Behringer in the first place in the eyes of a lot of people, myself included.

I've had that Pro-1 in my cart many times, but haven't pulled the trigger. It sounds great in the videos I've watched. I'm surprised it's not more popular.

Hi Lugia,

Of course, I go to test it (B 2600) at my local dealer first as well before buying it (if buying it).

You are totally right about testing it at your local dealer first. When I heard about ASM Hydrasynth I was wildly enthusiastic but when I finally tested it at my dealer, it wasn't that fantastic as I hoped for, hence I didn't bought it.

I must say, I had similar experience with the Argon 8, after testing it, I wasn't really impressed to be honest, even less impressed than I was about the ASM... I felt both disappointed me quite a bit. Let me see if I can find my test notes about Argon 8...

Yeah, I checked, generally not impressed by the building quality and user interface quality. The knobs I felt were too loose and the keyboard quality didn't impressed me either. Overall for that money I didn't feel it was worth it. I found one positive regarding the Argon8 though and that was the usage of the joystick, I liked to use the joystick of the Argon8. However for the overall value I decided it's not worth it for me to buy it.

But looks like you were pretty happy with it? What where the qualities that convinced you about the Argon8 that I perhaps overlooked?

Thank you and kind regards, Garfield.

The Argon8? Lots of things...

1) Form factor. This thing's only about the general size of a Roland SH-101, but it's way more potent. Makes it a live MUST.

2) The rev.2 firmware. There's a few interesting surprises in there that really let you dive into the wavetable architecture, and more besides. Still exploring that...

3) Not as gimmicky. One screen for the UI, which is ultimately less distracting. Of course, this means that you lose the ribbon and the poly aftertouch, but I already have a fine old CS-80 for satisfying that itch. Or there's also the CME Xkey25 here, which is part of my multitrack DAW rig. And it's worth noting that the Hydrasynth's poly aftertouch feel was rather different from the CS-80, which I consider the "gold standard" for that, and that was offputting.

4) Modal apparently doesn't have total a-holes working as their regional reps. Also, requests for information from Modal don't result in "thank you for interesting in our suplime product of musical"-type form emails which convey less than zero info, which then necessitate further inquiries that wind up triggering one of the aforementioned a-holes.

5) I actually feel like the Modal does a better job at being closer to a pure wavetable machine than the Hydrasynth, and some of that is clearly due to a smarter UI. It's simple...just like the good ol' PPG Wave 2.3 I had was, and makes a nice complement to the Sledge 2.0, which is also VERY PPGish but...different.

And the clincher...6) It can take a dive to the floor from about 3 1/2 feet up and not only still work, but look as if nothing happened to it at all. Had a bit of an accident while reconfiguring the Jaspers vs Ultimate frankenstand, didn't faze the Argon8 one bit! To say the least, I'm impressed.

The Argon8 does require a good bit of getting used to, true. But so does the Hydrasynth. I'd just prefer to vote with my money as to what I'm willing to put up with out of a manufacturer, and Modal gets that.

Hi Lugia,

Thank you very much for the detailed review on the Argon8, its pros. That gives me to think... I might give it a second test to see and check what you mean, giving it a second chance. I only need to get an opportunity to get to my local dealer, now with the virus stuff going on, I need to see if that's for this year still doable.

Thank you and kind regards, Garfield.

Garfield: if you can locate one at a dealer that has the latest firmware revision, that's the one to check out. Plenty of neat surprises in there...

Hi Lugia,

Oh great, thanks, will keep that in mind. Is there a quick or easy way to check on the Argon8 itself to check the firmware version? Or should I just RTFM? :-)

Kind regards, Garfield.

Is there a quick or easy way to check on the Argon8 itself to check the firmware version?
Kind regards, Garfield.
-- GarfieldModular

Yep...get into the Settings menu, then go to Settings-General, and you'll find the firmware indication.

And yes, DO read the V.2 manual first! https://www.modalelectronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/argon8_MANUAL_v2.pdf (there should be underscores before and after MANUAL, fyi...but the forum had other ideas). This has a lot of updates from the V.1 firmware, and there's some interesting things there. The synth LOOKS really basic...but the fact is, there's some major horsepower under the hood on this thing, and it's pretty easy to access. And one of the biggest 2.0 changes was the addition of MPE capability...so if you have an MPE controller on hand, this effectively kicks one of the Hydrasynth's bigger draws to the curb. No ribbon still...but hey, that'll just take a little more ingenuity to work around...for now.

EDITED Oct 31st 2020, 03:41

Nice to hear about how good the Modal Argon8 is as it would be fun to jam on one. I lost interest in Korg after they dropped the ball on the MS20 re-issue with overpriced special editions and so forth. WTF would I pay 1400 for the MS-20 FS re-issue when the mini does the job for a fraction of the price? Don't get me wrong- I love my SQ-1 and for under $100 does wonders for a simple immediate external battery powered modular step sequencer. Also love my old Korg Volcas those are superb and having external speaker built in with battery option is genius for jam machines. Not crazy on latest antics.

Yeah, the MS-20 reREissue with the goofy colors for twice-plus the cost of the electronically-identical Mini is another one of those "Korg's lost their damn minds" indicators I think I mentioned. WHY DO THIS!? My two Minis sound and behave exactly like the MS-20's original version did out of the box back in 1980. True, some people do bitch and moan about how the Mini doesn't sound like an original-build MS-20...but that original one's had 35-40 years of age on it, and electronic components DO age. But if you had a chance to pull one out of the box and styrofoam back in the day and compare what THAT was like to the Mini...no diff, really.

I'd have to say that their peak achievements were the Volca Modular, and the 'Logues before the revisions. After that, Korg started heading off into "bats**t insane" territory. They WERE really kickin' for a while, but at this point a lot of what they're up to is strange and seemingly pointless. I won't touch another new Korg product at this point until

1) the synth community gets either an explanation or an apology from Korg for the KARP 2600 FS fiasco, AND

2) whoever is coming up with these marketing strategies there gets handed their walking papers, AND

3) put that effin' 2600 out so EVERYONE can have one. Or at this point, everyone who doesn't bop out and get Uli's version. For cheaper. A lot cheaper. As in "actually competing with Behringer cheaper", because if they don't answer that call NOW, they stand poised to lose both sales and cred. I mean...c'mon, we don't NEED that stamped out of pasteboard "road case", Korg, just GIVE US WHAT YOU TEASED FOR YEARS!

Hi Lugia,

Ha, ha, and I thought you didn't like Behringer but it seems you don't like Korg even less than Behringer ;-) Take a very deep breath... :-D

Just teasing you of course ;-)

Thank you regarding the firmware check, will do that when I am going to my local dealer, planning that about early-mid November (if virus situation allows it). Good hint indeed to read the manual first before going there and testing it again.

By the way, wanted to ask you that already for a while... what's your opinion on the Waldorf - Iridium, is it as attractive as the "marketing sheets, videos & stuff" do let us believe or...is it that bats**t too? ;-) It ain't cheap, I realise that but at least it's almost half of the price of the Quantum, so not too bad either. I can't wait to have this thing (Iridium) tested at my local dealer, to check if it's really as cool as Waldorf might want us let believe :-)

Thank you very much and kind regards, Garfield.

I gave the Iridium a look-over. It's nice...gives you the Quantum engine, etc in a desktop package, and it's cheaper. If you've got a good controller already, or just want to drive it from a DAW, it's not a bad choice. The other desktop Waldorf did recently, though...the Kyra...is REALLY interesting, but my concerns with it are that while it may have 1,000+ oscillators, there's no factory editor that allows you to get under the Kyra's hood, so to speak. And from what I can tell, there's only one third-party trying like hell to sort that out...and even THEY don't have a full-on functional version. Damn shame, really, but it's not the first time Waldorf's created an "orphan" synth.

If there WAS a fully-featured Kyra editor, though, I'd say to get THAT synth. FPGA arrays are super-potent...but they NEED a good UI front end that's way more capable than just the OEM front panel itself.

EDITED Nov 1st 2020, 00:30

Hi Lugia,

Thank you for your point of view. Interesting thoughts about the Kyra indeed. So, I will test at my local dealer not only the Iridium but the Kyra as well :-)

Kind regards, Garfield.

Korg also dropped the ball on their small SQ-1 sequencer by not including a standard 9v power jack and requiring a USB dongle to power it or use 2xAA batteries.